Each spring, Many of the world's best and brightest young minds in Science, Math, and Technology gather in Beijing, China to discuss the latest advances made in their home countries. UNC-TV reporter Jeff Smith travels to China with a delegation of North Carolina educators and students for the Beijing Youth Science Creation Competition. This year’s American group is composed entirely of North Carolinians and each student designed their own project, which they presented at the competition. Mentors from the Grassroots Science Museum Collaborative, a teacher, and a member of the Governors office also join the U.S. contingent. After a week in and around Beijing, the group discusses what they see, the cultural icons of China, and how the United States differs from the world in science education.
As the students put their skills to the test, find out what they learned and what educators plan to take back to the classroom on GLOBE WATCH: China—A North Carolina Now Special.
And as the world spotlight hits China for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, this summer UNC-TV presents two all-new specials from FRONTLINE and FRONTLINE/World exploring the changing face of Chinese culture.
FRONTLINE explores the generation coming of age in China today. Shot over four years, Young & Restless in China follows a group of nine young Chinese men and womenfrom across the country as they scramble to keep pace with a society changing as fast as any before in history. Stories of ambition and desire, exuberance and frustration, crime and corruption, along with moments of heartache and despair weave together to create an intimate portrait of the generation remaking China.
Evan Osnos reports from inside one of the country’s most important, but least understood movements—China’s underground churches—on Jesus in China. A joint project of FRONTLINE/World and the Chicago Tribune, the film examines the wave of Christianity sweeping across the country in recent years and the different ways the Chinese ruling party—officially atheistic—now races to control it. Probing this volatile religious and political fault line, Osnos travels to the “Bethlehem of China” in Henan Province, gains access to unregistered “megachurches” in China’s fastest-growing cities and finds a number of Communist Party members and independent activists willing to come out publicly as Christians. In addition, in this hour, two more "stories from a small planet," including a look at how Rwanda, in recent years, has become an unlikely haven for a new breed of social entrepreneur taking the lead in rebuilding a devastated country.
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